ABSTRACT
Roman urbanism is often viewed through the prism of familiarity. The development of archaeology in Britain has lent itself to continued reinforcement of this approach, with aspects of the Roman world being directly equated to modern life. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the analysis of water. To this day the creation of a ‘running water’ supply is seen as an integral aspect of civilised, practical urban living, and the recognisable water infrastructure of Roman towns, such as wells, aqueducts, sewers and bathhouses, has been interpreted in this vein. This chapter traces the development of attitudes towards water in modernity and shows the direct impact this has on our outlook of the Roman world. It is proposed that the reality of perspectives on water in Roman Britain may be far more complex, derived from a mixture of local and incoming beliefs, and distant from our own. By ‘making strange’ (or defamiliarising) our view of water in the past, we no longer rely on the outdated idea of a uniform and civilised Roman identity as justification for constructing pivotal municipal features like a bathhouse. Instead, we can appreciate the complex network of hybrid identities and motivations that drove urbanism in Roman Britain.
